Vaughan Wins Leadership Award

K.T. Vaughan has been busy since graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 with a master’s in library science. In addition to being appointed as an adjunct clinical assistant professor in the UNC School of Pharmacy, Vaughan recently was awarded the American Society for Information Science and Technology’s James M. Cretsos Leadership Award for her contributions to the organization.

The Cretsos Award was established in 1992 to recognize new ASIS&T members who have demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities in professional ASIS&T activities. It is administered by the Leadership Committee and is presented annually to the recipient during the ASIS&T annual business meeting.

Vaughan’s involvement with ASIS&T began when she was still a student on the Constitution and Bylaws Committee in 2000. Since then, she has been the recipient of the Special Interest Groups/Scientific & Technical Information Chemical Abstracts Service Student Travel Award, chaired the SIG/STI in her first year as a non-student member and led major recruiting efforts to attract new members to the organization.

Members of SIG attribute her contributions to the revitalization of the group and as a major factor in its recognition as SIG of the year in 2002 and again in 2004. Vaughan is regarded as an active and enthusiastic participant on committees and an intricate force for maintaining the necessary partnerships for the Trisociety. In 2001 she began organizing programs and presenting papers at the annual meeting. Her energy and personality endear her to colleagues and recruits, and she actively fosters collaborative research to present to the society.

Vaughan is currently expecting her second book, Building Bridges: Collaboration within and beyond the Academic Library (with Anne Langley and Teddy Gray of Duke University) to be published in February 2006. She takes on the UNC Pharmacy assistant professorship in addition to her primary position as the librarian for Bioinformatics & Pharmacy at the UNC Health Science Library.